- Community-Centered Services
- Community at the Center of Connected Learning
- Asset Framing
- Community-Centered Partnerships
- Rethinking Partnerships
- Gathering Data
- Asset Mapping
- Talking with the Community
- Analyzing and Using the Data
- Tools for Connecting Your Community
- Starting Conversations
- Combining Your Powers
- Making Plans Together
- Working with Different Types of Partners
- Ending a Partnership
- Community-Centered Services Workbook
- Additional Resources
Rethinking Partnerships
Libraries can build partnerships in support of connected learning by starting to build relationships with people, organizations, and stakeholders that relate to the interests of teens. You might get started by going to events in which teens are involved - school plays and sporting events for example - and talking with the adults at those events. If you attend meetings of organizations that support teens, talk with the people there about their connections to teens and how they see teens being supported in the community. Through these conversations and event/meeting attendance, library staff are able to learn about teen interests and begin to build relationships with others in the community who can through time and relationship-building can become partners in support of teen interests, building of relationships, and creating opportunities.
The Value of Partnerships
Partners can help create connections between youth’s everyday learning environments (home, school, and library) and “real world” spaces, opening up a more diverse set of possible experiences and directions for learners.
- A partner can share expertise, provide mentorship, and offer real-world experience to youth that can help them achieve academically or prepare them to start a career.
- Partners can help youth learn more about areas of interest and even new career options related to those areas.
- By providing access to materials, equipment, or expertise that the library lacks, partners can expose youth to new creative experiences.
- Partners can give teens a chance to contribute to an effort bigger than the kinds of projects that are usually available to them.
- Community groups can help bring new audiences to library programs, making new peer connections possible.
- Engaging the entire community in the development of teens develops a sense of shared purpose and lets the teens know they are valued.
Levels of Partnership
What moves a partnership from collaboration and cooperation to fully community-centered? Partners can have varying levels of engagement and commitment, from simply networking and sharing ideas to, to mentoring, to long-term co-management of projects. Different levels of engagement may be appropriate for different partners, depending on your respective goals and resources. Just because the partnership is less intense does not mean it is less valuable to your teens.
Networking and sharing ideas with someone who has a different perspective on the community can be valuable. Simply attending another organization’s events can be the first steps in forming a partnership.
Cooperating and coordinating is possible if you know what other organizations in your community are doing. You can build on each other’s work or avoid duplication. For instance, if the high school library has a vibrant reading group, you may not wish to set up a competing teen book club, but you might promote read-alikes in the library.
Informing teens about partners can be accomplished by sharing information on the library website or in library spaces. Partners can also be invited to set up a table in the teen area at scheduled times, giving the teens direct access to their services (for instance, providing legal or health information).
Collaborating on teen programming with partners can create something more impactful than either partner working alone, as a short series or a one-time event.
Forming or joining community coalitions allows organizations to support each other’s efforts and to have conversations about how they can all work together better to serve youth.
Embedding partners means establishing “fully invested” partners with whom the library has forged deep, long-term relationships that are embedded into the library’s regular services to teens.
Collective impact can occur when disparate organizations unite to work on a particular community issue together. The collective impact approach is characterized by a common goal, shared measurement of progress, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and a formalized support infrastructure.